Category: Inmate Communication

Contraband in the prison is a danger for everyone that either works, lives, or visits the jail. In the wrong hands, an inmate can turn something as innocent as a pen into a deadly weapon, so my staff of corrections officers has to really be on our game each day. This means working tirelessly to get an edge on these inmates and to stop them from being able to get their hands on anything illegal.

Securus Technologies had recently contacted our prison about installing the latest in inmate phone monitoring systems, and my superiors gave the approval immediately. This company is headed by Rick Smith, and all of his 1,000 employees of the Dallas-based company are working each day towards the objective of making the world safer for everyone. This was the type of company and support we needed in our corner as we tried to eliminate contraband from getting into our prison. When you have your communication system in over 2,600 jails, you have to be doing something right.

We were instructed by our superiors to get trained on the LBS software and get familiar with how the monitoring system worked. One thing we were not prepared for was how soon we were going to get results and how much the inmates were actually getting away with each day right under our noses. The system is capable of doing the job of several officers, which means that we can spread out our resources and tackle the problem from a bunch of different angles. We were about to finally get control of the inmates in ways we had not imagined.

During the first week of monitoring the calls, we picked up inmate chatter concerning weapons being assembled and hidden along the fence in the yard. Our team collected those weapons before any incidents took place. We also heard conversations about inmates using crack in their cells, so after a thorough search, we discovered where and how these inmates got it by us. We even discovered visitors were slipping prescription drugs to inmates right in front of several security guards who were unable to even see anything taking place time after time.

While these incidents may seem small on the surface, when you add them up after course of just a week, you really get to see how much you are really controlling. It only takes one instance of an inmate getting a weapon and hurting an officer that really stops momentum. Each time we get more control over the inmates, they come to realize that they are either going to have to comply or give up, because we are only going to tighten that noose a little more each day.